this place about to blow
by themonkeytwin
Summary: This is a result of my previous crack!verse stuff  "guys' night" and "girls' night"  crashing manically into repeat watchings of KeSha's "Blow" music vid. Because when you have a Wolverine!Eliot and a Tinkerbell!Parker, how do you NOT put them in that?
1. get in for free

**Disclaimer:** anything you recognize probably isn't mine. Also, I tend to loathe RPF, and these are very intentionally the characters as portrayed in the music video.

**Notes:** Okay, look, I have no idea where this stuff is coming from. I think this crack!verse is just somewhere for my muse to run around naked and high on gummi bears, so I make absolutely no promises about coherence.

**WARNING, NO, SERIOUSLY:** This is the third installment in the crack!verse series, but you really don't have to have read the other ones for this to make any kind of sense. WHAT YOU DO (almost certainly) HAVE TO HAVE SEEN is **KE$HA'S "BLOW" MUSIC VID**. I can't seem to stop watching it now that I've started, so you undertake this at your own mental health risk, except if that's a concern then maybe don't be reading this fic series o' mine, either.

**Also:** this series has turned into a pop-culture-appropriationalooza where anything can be, so fair warning, I'm not trying to make it make sense for anyone but me. **If you haven't read the first two** (_guys' night_ and _girls' night_) probably all you need to know that Eliot is notreally!Wolverine and a notreally!Terminator and some other things, and Parker is kindasorta!Tinkerbell, and the rest of the team are similarly interesting but irrelevant to this fic. There. I've done all I can to help you out, and otherwise you're just going to have to ask me what the hell.

**Additional WARNING:** there are some things in this that are either hilarious or totally disturbing, _and I don't know which_. It's all really quite weird, however. This is a your-own-risk kind of deal.

**Feedback:** I do actually have a second part to this rattling around in my head, as if this weren't ridiculous enough. The question is whether I should write it up and post it.

* * *

Nate stuck his head around the corner to find Eliot finishing the last sweep-through to remove all traces of the team's tracks. "Eliot! Come on, you're going to miss the group-stand-around, smirking-at-the-mark's-comeuppance thing!"

Eliot opened his mouth, glanced at Nate, and thought better of it. "We _have_ to find a better name for that," he muttered instead. "We have cool cryptic jargon for everything else..."

"Yeah yeah, later. You coming?"

Eliot was saved by an incoming text. He took one look at it and paled. He shoved the bag of loose ends at Nate and immediately dialed the sender back.

"Are you _insane_?" he yelled a second later. "Tell me this is just another of your idiot stunts, Va– So what if the back door cracked! Even if you don't need a key, you'll – she's what? Well ... okay, what's she wearing?... _What?_ Are you kidding me? And you're still thinking of going in alone?... No you _don't_. There'll be another chance. At least wait until I can – Jay!" He lowered his now-silent cell phone and scowled furiously at it. "He is _such_ an _idiot_."

Nate was still watching, poised in the way that said he was ready to ride gallantly once more into another's troubles, which was the last thing Eliot wanted. "You need us?"

"Just Parker. And I need her _now_," he said urgently. "We done here?"

Nate nodded his permission on both counts, and Parker appeared, tottering slightly in the long evening dress she was still wearing from the con. "What is it?"

Eliot pulled out his earbud before replying. "It's James. He says he's got a bead on Ke$ha and he's going in."

"Alone?" Parker's expression contrived to indicate that even she thought that was crazy.

"That's what I said!" He showed her the message. "Can you get us there?"

She read the location in the text, then scanned their surroundings in a way that suggested she wasn't looking at the hallways. She grimaced. "LA? Four minutes," she estimated.

Eliot almost groaned; this thing would be over in four minutes. But they couldn't just leave the idiot hung out to dry. "Let's go, then."

Parker took a step, then made a sound of frustration at the restriction of her skirt. "Give me that," she said, grabbing Eliot's wrist in one hand and his fingers in another, holding them at an impossibly precise angle and forcing them into a fist.

"Hey!" he yelped over the _snikt_ as three long, silvery claws shot from between his knuckles. "Those aren't toys!"

She ignored him, digging fingers into his wrist in such a way that two claws retracted, then deftly applied the third to the material she held away from her thigh. It slit apart along the razor edge like petals falling away from an old rose, while Eliot glared at her but didn't fight it for fear of stabbing her. She kicked out of the excess material and her high heels, legs now bare to the little spandex undershorts she always wore and hardly decent, but at least with a free range of movement.

She allowed Eliot's last claw to retract, taking his hand instead, and closed her eyes, delicately feeling out the thin air around her with her free hand. Drawing down, she let her fingers slip _in_ and fluttered them deftly along invisible pins, then eased her palm in, pressing down to the shear line. She took a deep breath, checked her alignment, and _twisted_. "Come on!" she snapped, diving through and jerking Eliot after her.

A little under four minutes later, they stumbled into a dark alleyway under the starless LA sky. A beer bottle skittered off, announcing their presence to no one but a huddled homeless man who was either asleep or ignoring them entirely.

Eliot doubled up, putting a hand out against the wall and dry-retching while Parker scanned the alley. "The club's over there," she said when he began to straighten, his mind still on the journey.

"Via _Guadalajara?_" he asked accusingly.

"When was the last time you picked a planet?" she shot back. "It _picks back_, you know!"

"I noticed," he said. Few could travel this way in the first place, and even they wouldn't if they could possibly avoid it. He unkinked himself and made a mental note to do the same, when a stray scent caught his nose. He sniffed the fetid air more deeply. "_Faugh_ ... no, he went this way, around the back," he said, his turn to pull her after him.

They peered carefully around the corner at the back entrance, hearing the muted thud of deafening dance music inside. The muscle-mountain bouncer standing impassively in front of the door was human, but Parker frowned, taking in the little clues. "Eliot ... this is a monohorn joint."

Eliot agreed, glad the con they'd just come from had him in black tie, not just Nate. He ran his eye over Parker; her evening dress was still passable, despite the drastic shortening. The bare feet might be a problem, but then again, maybe not. Monohorns were weird like that. Either way, the dress code would make infiltration that much easier. He smoothed his hair out, pulled Parker's arm through his and strode boldly up to the door.

The bouncer assessed them with that slow arrogance of gatekeepers everywhere, when a sudden crash sounded from inside, only just distinguishable from the music. Eliot and the bouncer reacted simultaneously, the bouncer in alarm and Eliot in violence.

Pulling the door open against the bouncer's unconscious body, Eliot had to duck a blaze of rainbow that flashed out into the backway, and cursed loudly. Parker kept low and followed him in, where a hemorrhage of colors against gothic architecture made it hard to get their bearings.

"Where is he?" she shouted in Eliot's ear over the music.

"I can't ... oh, no..."

Parker followed his gaze in time to see a flounce of long, blonde hair as Ke$ha stood up, a human head in her hands. She struck a pose with it and giggled, a fake, soulless sound that shouldn't have carried through the noise all the way to where they were hiding behind a column.

With a single imperious gesture, Ke$ha made her way out of the club through the front, trailed by the few monohorns not lying dead or rainbowleeding out on the floor.

"Follow her!" Eliot ordered Parker. "And don't get made."

Parker nodded, drawing back and changing in a quick, implosive jingle. However, before she could flit after the group, Eliot suddenly held up his hand. She alighted on the heel of his palm with a chime of curiosity at him, and he shrugged awkwardly. "Just ... be careful," he said.

A little teasing trill at his concern answered him, and he shook her off his palm. "I'm serious," he said, and she tinkled out an _I know_ before darting over the chandelier and out a high window, leaving only the dimmest trail of stealth shimmer behind. He sighed, and made his way through the black tie carnage toward the smell of real blood, where Ke$ha had stood. There were scorch marks everywhere on the walls, the red glow not even entirely faded from some. It had been one hell of a fight.

He went carefully, avoiding the occasional flickering prisms still bleeding from the humanoid bodies as well as the horns on their unicorn heads, which could retain a charge even hours after death. Along the way he found scraps of an evening jacket scattered on the floor, along with a black strapless bra, all of which told him a particular story. He scooped them up, knowing what he would find when he reached his destination.

"Agh, Jay," he said, pained, when he finally found the headless body sprawled out on the floor, untied bowtie pitifully haphazard and white dress shirt showing up a wound in his shoulder. This was going to be messy.

Eliot stripped off his own jacket and hung it off a nearby horn, careful not to touch it or let the jacket drape in any rainbow, then rolled up his sleeves and hefted his friend's body into the nearest bucket chair. Once he got it sitting up, he pulled the smartphone out of the trouser pocket and placed it in its hand, propping it on the lap so it didn't all fall to the floor.

"Okay, you want to explain yourself, here?" he asked, none too gently.

As the hand with the smartphone began to tap out a reply, Eliot folded the bra over and fit the cups into each other, using them as wadding for the ragged mess of the neck. Threading the bowtie through the loop where the bra doubled over and tying it off to keep the cups in place made for an oddly jaunty yet formal field dressing.

The hand twitched with the phone, and Eliot angled it to read. "_STRTD WEL. MNSTR CHEEZ_.

"– Dude. Muenster? All divas being lactose intolerant is a _myth_. They just say it to be petulant and whiny."

The thumb flickered over the buttons.

"_NO FAVRTE_.

"... It's her favorite brand?"

The thumb stood up happily.

"Oh." Eliot thought about this, and started working on bandaging the shoulder with one of the jacket sleeves he'd picked up. "Still not a lot of tactical advantage there, Jay. You know what would have been better? _Waiting_ for me!

"... _2 LNG_.

"Right. And how long is it going to take now, Junior?"

The hand holding the phone drooped a little, and was slower to tap out the next part.

"_HD 2. F8_.

"– No, man. This ain't _fate_. It's an addiction. A sick, sick obsession, and look what it's done to you! She's probably mounting your head on her wall as we speak.

"... _I CN DO THS_."

Eliot paused and his head dropped for a moment. "Look, man, I get it. I do. But you know what I'm gonna have to do –"

He stopped when the other hand managed to grab him urgently, while the other typed frantically. He read the message, and sighed. He wondered if he was going soft or getting old or both. "No promises."

Sagging, with little energy remaining, the hands made a placating gesture as if to say that was more than fair, before falling limply to the body's sides. The smartphone clattered to the wooden floor.

Eliot picked it up, mouth tight. He stared at the message, then looked at the lifeless body, and tucked the phone back into a pocket. "I'll try, buddy. I'll try."


	2. drink that koolaid

The music had extinguished when Ke$ha left, but only now did the room feel truly silent. After a fitting moment of pathos over the body of his friend, Eliot turned and surveyed his surroundings with an expert eye, pulling out his own phone. Thankfully, LA was crawling with fixers with something for this kind of situation, a few of whom he actually even half-way trusted. He entered a code and located the exact spectrum wavelength in a still-glowing rainbow, neatly threading his phone through the rays. The mode he needed thus unlocked, he scrolled down the contacts until he found the one he wanted.

"Hey – yeah, it's me. Listen, I need – no, I'm not dead – where'd you hear that?. –Oh. – Huh. – Look, I got a situation here. One body, no head, pile of dead monohorns, club downtown, on the clock. – Yeah? Perfect. I can get the rest. – No, no disposal. I'll handle the retrieval myself. I'll need a crash zone, though. Preferably with a full kitchen, I might have a package to reheat, too. – Yeah, I know where that is. – What? Hell no, you still owe me from last time. – Hah. – A few hours, maybe. – Cool. See you in ten minutes."

He texted the club's address, then got to work. A wrought-iron lantern candelabra protruding from a wall was around the right size, and a _snikt_ and a swipe had it dropping into his waiting hand, where he gutted the electric candle, leaving the iron cylinder empty. Setting it neatly on the body's lap to hold, he then collected the last pieces of shredded jacket and moved through the room, assessing the horns.

Selecting a promising one, he raised his claw to it with some trepidation, then thought better of it. Plucking a long shard from a broken glass tabletop, he wrapped the material around one end and ignored the bite as he gripped it tight. Before the cascade of second thoughts could gain any more momentum and end with him just walking out the door, he angled his body away protectively, set his footing, and sliced it down in a hard overhand swing.

The deafening blaze of white color filled his skull a split second before the blinding boom wrapped its concussion around him; ultraviolet leaped every which way, earthing itself along the monohorn's body, down the iron table leg, crackling over Eliot's teeth enroute to his conduction-friendly skeleton. It was all he could do to drop the twisted, half-molten scrap of glass, curl downward, jam his UV-laced claws deep into the floor, brace, and hope.

Long after it seemed like the raw power leakage should have dried up – didn't these guys know about coagulation? – Eliot realized he could open his eyes without feeling like he was being stabbed in both ears. Blinking blearily, he started to get to his feet, but his knees had something rude to say about that which amounted to him landing on his ass.

A heartfelt expletive seemed appropriate at this point, so he gave one. Then he patted himself down, exploring the damage he'd absorbed. It took a minute to regenerate enough to stand and despoil an intact pair of trousers from outside the blast radius.

"_Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs_ ..." he groused, scowling to himself as he manhandled a pair off a monohorn who didn't need them any more, then shrugged out of the shreds of his own clothes. His underwear wasn't in the best of shape either, but it stayed on. That didn't bear thinking about. Given that (no matter what the movies showed) no one had ever been able to develop clothes that were invincible around the netherregions, being a regen was _not_ as fun as people assumed. He also gave up on the idea of finding a shirt that wasn't shot up, but a formal jacket over a raggedy tank top was far from the weirdest thing that would be seen out on the streets of LA at night. It'd pass.

A screech of car tyres outside the back entrance reached his ears, and for the first time since he received the text, a grin appeared on Eliot's face.

The man who came through the door was short even compared to Eliot, and impeccable in clothes that, had everyone else in the club not been dead, would have made him blend right in. His goatee and hair now had more silver than dark, and he sported a sleek pair of wire rims that Eliot had never seen him wear before, but his calculating gaze as he took in the situation was as sharp as ever.

"Eliot," he greeted with an insouciance that didn't quite disguise his pleasure at seeing him again. "I take it the bouncer outside is your work?"

"Winston." Eliot gripped his hand gladly, the grin still playing around his mouth.

Winston took that as a yes. "But not all –" he gestured, "– this?"

Eliot shrugged dismissively. "No."

"No," Winston agreed, taking in the bullet holes everywhere. "Not your style any more, is it? Where's the body?"

"Over here." Eliot led the way.

"Did you get a power sou–" Winston stopped as he saw the scorch radius around the de-horned head. "Huh," he said neutrally, a reaction on par with a string of four-letter words from any other man.

Using yet more scraps of clothing, Eliot gingerly picked the horn up and offered it to Winston.

Winston held his hands up drily, more than happy to let Eliot carry it. "It'll do."

Arriving at the body, Winston inspected it briefly, then took the lantern shell of the lap and stepped back, nodding at Eliot.

Juggling the horn awkwardly, trying to get a solid two-handed grip on it without actually touching it and ignoring all the little zaps he was getting through the material anyway, Eliot came around behind the chair. He pulled the bra away, exchanged a look with Winston, then spiked the horn tip-down into the trachea.

The body jerked wildly as the energy coursed through it, then fell back into the chair and continued to twitch uncontrollably. Eliot shook his buzzing hands out, ignoring the twinkle in Winston's eye at his discomfort, and seized the shoulders in a lock, holding it as still as possible.

Hefting the lantern, Winston skirted the scrabbling legs and fitted the cylinder snugly onto the neck. Then he pulled a metallic strip from his pocket and made it a collar around the base of the new lantern-head, working with fast and expert fingers to adjust and integrate the whole apparatus on the neck, ignoring the tremors Eliot's hold on the body couldn't entirely suppress. Finally, he shooed Eliot over and found the little panel at the back of the collar, depressing the spike mounted on it into the body's spine.

The body shuddered and settled immediately. A little shiver of returning motor function traveled through it, before he calmly stood and turned and nodded stiffly at the two men.

"How's it feel?" Eliot asked.

"Tingly," lantern-headed James answered. He flexed his hands. "Thank you."

Eliot nodded, looking him over consideringly. "Does it do anything about the...?" he asked Winston, indicating the lantern sitting inscrutably in place of a head.

"Some would consider it an improvement," Winston noted. "But yes. Turn around, kid."

Lantern-headed James obeyed, and Winston did something to the panel. A few seconds later, some strange synthesis of substance and light knitted itself around the lantern frame in a perfect but frozen copy of James's head.

"Best we can do with what we have," Winston explained unapologetically.

Eliot nodded his approval. "It's more than enough." He retrieved James's gun and handed it to him. "We'll be at the crash zone in an hour or we won't be back at all. Come on, James. Let's finish this thing."


	3. now you're one of us

Because I have annoying friends, Kaya's music vid "Can't Get You Out Of My Mind" also makes something of an appearance in this chapter. Seeing it is not vital to the reading experience, though...

* * *

"It won't be easy," said James once they stepped out on the street in front of the club, words issuing oddly from his unmoving face. "Ke$ha's virtually untraceable if she wants to be, and I never thought to put a tracking device in my head. What are we going to do?"

Eliot looked up, and smiled. "I have breadcrumbs."

James's immobile expression conveyed his incomprehension remarkably well. "Oh."

Eliot rolled his eyes. "Never mind. Just follow me."

He set a fast pace following the trail of pixie dust left by Parker, invisible to the human eye but blazing bright through his imaginary visual filter, the super-charged body beside him keeping up easily. It was mere minutes before they reached another club strip and the end of their chase; Parker, lurking with consumate professionalism across from an entrance, saw them and came over.

"They went in there. I went through the vents and found them in one of the back rooms. I think they're in for the evening."

"You're sure?"

Parker gave Eliot a look. She wasn't often wrong about these things.

"Alright, alright. And she still had the head with her?"

Parker nodded, and glanced at James. "All the normals thought it was really cool. Well, a few of them. The ones who actually knew who he was, anyway." James looked at her, and once again his motionless face was remarkably expressive. She shrugged at him. "What? They were calling it a meme, I think. What's a meme? And are we getting it back?"

"Not just it," James said firmly.

Eliot exhaled. "So I really can't talk you out of that?"

James drew himself up, staring Eliot down with all the wooden, tragic nobility his face could muster. "It's the only reason I'm here. It's my purpose. My raison d'être. And one way or another, she ... is my destiny."

Never one to be loomed over, Eliot closed the small gap and got right up in his face. "Listen, man, in case you didn't notice, she's already killed you once tonight."

James nodded slowly, not backing down. "That's what I mean."

"Yeah, and who had to half-fry themselves putting you back together?"

"Oh-em-_gee_, you guys, are those guys gonna _man-kiss?_ That is _so_ hot."

Eliot and James turned, although Eliot seemed much the more startled of the two of them. "What?"

The three girls watching them looked like fifteen year-olds fresh from raiding their older sisters' closets, and the blonde at the back who'd asked the question immediately started giggling with the brunette at being overheard. The blonde at the front just sneered slightly.

Quietly, James leaned a little closer to Eliot, then had to grab his arm to keep him from forcefully maintaining distance between them. "It's a thing, don't worry about it."

"_Why_ do they think we're going to kiss?"

"Because we were standing close to each other. They've been neurologically programmed by the internet to assume that means kissing. And, er – uh, kissing. Definitely nothing else," James hastily amended, showing a far greater instinct for survival than the two girls who started whispering excitedly.

His grip on Eliot's arm was the only thing that kept Eliot from marching over there and expressing himself. "Careful," he said quickly. "That's an alpha blonde flanked by an ancillary blonde and a brunette, in ridiculously sassy clothes, no less."

Eliot stared at him, then at the group, further confusion adding its fuel to the fire. "_What_ are you talking about?"

"Look at them. It's a classic tween girl version of a Power Trio," James hissed, as though it were obvious. "Don't you _watch_ music videos or teen dramas?"

Eliot was nearing the apoplectic event-horizon. "NO!"

Meanwhile, the alpha blonde had arrived at a verdict. "Oh. That's just James Van Der Something. He was a star in the eighties I guess. My sister had a total crush on him but she's way old."

The brunette squinted. "How come his face doesn't, like ... change?"

"Nah, he's always like that."

"But isn't there all those gifs of him –"

"Photoshop or whatever." She flipped her shoulder decidedly and turned her attention to the club's entrance. "Do you see him?"

"Oh! There!" The ancillary blonde pointed excitedly at some boy in line. "There he is!"

"Okay." The alpha blonde settled her clothes and fluffed her hair. "You sure this makes me look like I don't even know he exists any more?"

"Oh, totally. I mean, we've changed clothes like three times already. This is _the_ outfit, I promise."

The girl nodded, and struck a pose. "Formation," she ordered, and the two took up a complementary arrangement behind her.

Parker looked bewildered. "So ... what's going on?"

"They're attempting the power trio strut." James studied them for a second. "It's a breaching tactic. It can be very effective – in skilled hands it can even dominate the whole room. If I'm not mistaken, that's Kaya – she's kind of a sober Ke$ha. Word has it she can actually sing."

"Is that even important any more?"

"Eh, it gives her an edge in some areas. I don't know if she's ready for this, though."

Eliot shook his head. "How do you _know_ all this?"

James half-turned. "Eliot. This is my beat. Now, watch. They're starting their run... Ooh, that was sloppy. You see how she made eye contact? Rookie mistake. She's not even supposed to notice _anyone_ in the line, let alone that kid they were trying to ignore. She might get away with it, though ... and, no, right there. They misjudged the doorman gauntlet. That's the trickiest pass, especially with seasoned doormen – too fast, they get pissed and pull you back. Too slow, and – there he goes, she's getting carded. That's going to go well."

"Right. That's our way in. Parker? How's your strut?"

"Our what?" James asked at the same time as Parker's "My what?"

"Two blondes, one brunette," Eliot pointed out. "We have to do this fast. If Ke$ha came here with spoils after a fight, it's probably because this is friendly territory. Her people might be all over the place in there, and we can't give her a chance to entrench. Not to mention that charge you're running on ain't gonna last forever, Jay. Parker?"

She looked helplessly at James. "Um..."

"It's easy," James assured her quickly. "Just imagine you're the only person in existence, and lead with your hips like they're parting the Red Sea. Keep your focus on the doorman. It's all about the attitude."

Eliot nodded firmly. "Like he's a diamond you're stealing. It may not be in your hand yet, but it's already yours."

Parker perked up at their conviction. "Oh, okay. I can do that."

"Sure you can," Eliot encouraged her grinningly. "Get through that door and keep going straight to where Ke$ha is. Don't stop for anything. We'll be right behind you the whole way."

She nodded and turned to contemplate the approach. As the two men fell in behind, Eliot noticed the uncertainty that had leaked into James's body language. "What?" he whispered, careful not to let Parker overhear.

"Okay, one, this is can be a very tricky maneuver even for pros. At best it's about 50/50 that the beachhead will crack the inside, too. And it's usually done unisex. You know, either all guys or all girls. Also? I've never heard of a strut being done _barefoot_."

Eliot glared. "Do I look like I carry ladies' shoes around with me? This is what we've got, and we're running out of time. Next time I ask you to wait, you wait!"

"Sure thing, cowboy. If we survive this."

In front of them, Parker opened her eyes slowly, emerging from visualizing the course in front of her. Her hand had found her hip, and glance over her shoulder caught Eliot's confident nod. She threw him a wink and a smirk, then with a whip of hair she faced front and locked onto the doorman, the one fluid movement continuing all the way down to her feet. She stepped out and it was as though time slowed around her.

Alerted by a prickle in some primal section of his spine, the doorman looked up from the pout of the girl he was refusing to admit into the club. Across the street a pair of eyes were slitted onto him like a cat's on a mouse, above a body that was all curves and long limbs and moving toward him like a steadily swishing tail, meshing perfectly with the pounding bass beats from inside the club. His mouth fell open. He'd been strutted hundreds of times on this door, but as she bore down on him it was suddenly as if he'd never built up any tolerance at all.

On the street a car screeched to a halt, barely missing the girl and the two men flanking her, but none of them so much as twitched in acknowledgment of it. The strut continued inexorably, the three of them flowing like a force of nature as a hush rippled along the waiting line and everyone turned to watch, even the girls arguing to get in.

Moving of its own volition and with perfect timing, his hand went to the plush rope and unhooked it, drawing it back just as she reached him. Strut protocol had minimal acknowledgment for the doorman, but the little sly sideways smile she rewarded him with somehow made him feel like a precious gem must when it's stolen; guilty and elated all at once. This impression didn't strike him as odd until much later.

With this sole beat in their forward momentum, they swept through the door and plunged into the pulsating crowd. The doorman shook his head out, then looked down at the rope in his hands, and replaced it. The girls who'd been toppled out of the trio's trajectory tried to regroup, and he just shook his head at them, sadly but not unkindly. "Just go home, girls. Come back in a few years once you've had time to get it right."

Inside, the mass of moving bodies parted smoothly around their sheer impetus, Parker driving a path clear through to the back rooms. In less than a minute, she pulled up next to a door.

"This one," she said.

Eliot scented the air and nodded. "Well done," he said with a proud twinkle at her, then checked the way they'd come. Several people were moving for them purposefully now that the natural currents of the crowd had been restored, and he glanced at James, who drew his gun and nodded his readiness.

The faint sound of laughter on the other side of the door cut off as four deep pounds busted it wide open. Ke$ha's mouth fell open in shock and she dropped the monohorn's hand she'd been holding, but before she could reach for her own pistols she was staring down the barrel of James's.

Eliot extended his claws to gesture at the monohorns sitting on either side of her. "Gentlemen? Time to go."

They obeyed quickly and ran straight into the personnel coming the other way, the collision holding them up just long enough for Parker to slam the door. She slapped her hand over the latch with a quick flare of golden light. "It won't hold long," she said over the thuds and rattles of them trying to get through. "You've got maybe three minutes."

Ke$ha smirked at James. "James Van Der Cockroach, I see. Just how hard are you to kill?"

"About as hard as you are," he said, an odd undercurrent in his voice. "Once upon a time, you'd have known that. Stand up. Nice and slow."

She did, a sinuous movement and a brief simper at Eliot, who ignored it as he took her guns away. She only grinned and turned her attention back to James. "So what now? You gonna execute me and mount _my_ head on _your_ wall?"

Eliot looked up at the wall behind her and snorted.

"No." James kept his gun trained on her while pulling out his phone with the other, and pressed a button. "Parker, kill the lights," he orderd, and in the dark the phone's screen lit up Ke$ha's face with an erratic strobe. "You're coming with me."

After a few seconds there was a sigh, and the pulsing flashes caught Ke$ha's fall back into her chair in freeze-frames. "Parker, lights," said James, switching his phone off, only lowering his weapon once he could see the vacant, blissful look on Ke$ha's face.

"What did you do to her?" asked Parker.

"This strobe pattern releases a certain kind of endorphin in her bloodstream. Combine with the chemicals released by muenster cheese, it's like hitting her with Rohypnol."

"You _roofied_ her? With _cheese?_... Neat."

James shrugged. "It takes a very specific combo."

Eliot was looking at him oddly. "That was your plan all along, wasn't it?" James remained silent, and Eliot's eyes flickered to Ke$ha's loopy expression and narrowed. "I don't know if I'm okay with this. How did you know it would work on her?"

The attempts of those outside the room to get in were getting noisier, and James bent over Ke$ha, waving Eliot off. "Eliot, I swear, I'll explain later. But right now this is the only way we're getting out of here, and we'll have to move fast. – Hey, baby. This party ain't really popping. I know a better one. How about we blow?"

Ke$ha looked up and slung her arm happily over his shoulders, letting him pull her to her feet with a giggle. "Sure thing, Poker-face."

"Well, I think some of your friends are gonna try to make you stay," said James, indicating the banging on the door.

She rippled with mellow belligerence. "Let them try and stop me."

Parker pulled the door open on James's nod, following them out with Eliot in the rear carrying James's mounted head. The people gathered around the door fell back in confusion under Ke$ha's high-beam withering look. "I am _bored_ with you," she informed them haughtily, and before they could recover, she took James's hand and wove their way out through the back with effortless drunken expertise.

Between them, Parker and Eliot stole the nearest parked hummer, and Eliot sped them all to Winston's crash zone. He pressed the intercom button on the building. "It's us."

"You followed?" came Winston's voice, tinny over the cheap speaker.

"No one all the way up to the blind zone, and Parker disguised the vehicle. We're all clear out here."

A buzzer sounded, of the kind that would usually indicate the door unlocking, but instead the front step sank away beneath them. It delivered them quietly into an underground corridor, which led to a security door and a wide, well-lit room beyond.

"I like your party," Ke$ha mumbled into James's chest, giving him a sloppy smile before stumbling, almost falling on her face.

"Yeah," he said quietly, lifting her in his arms with unexpected gentleness and carrying her the rest of the way, laying her on the table Winston directed him to. She promptly curled up on her side and started snoring.

"Okay, what is this?" Eliot asked, handing the head off to Winston. "Who is she really?"

"She's Ke$ha," James answered simply, touching the backs of his fingers to her hand before pulling himself away and meeting Eliot's demanding expression. He sighed. "She's my partner."

Even Winston, who was placing the head carefully in a complicated oven-like contraption, stopped and looked up at him at this.

"Partner as in ... _partner?_" Eliot voiced the common question.

"Er, well, I don't actually know what you mean by _partner_, but partner as in our mission was to crack the pop music scene. Two years ago we got a break, and she's been in undercover ever since." James's blank face turned from person to person, returning their looks with an intangible sense of defiance and agony. "Two years! Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? What that does to you?"

He turned away. "I was partnered with her because of my experience in the tween pop scene. I was supposed to keep her safe ... if I could. But infiltration took priority. No matter what. And, so help me, that's what I did. What I did to _her_."

Eliot approached slowly. "What you did to her?"

Wordlessly, James lifted her tangled hair, baring the back of her neck. He pulled his phone out again, attaching a slender jack and plugging it into the base of her skull, then showed Eliot the schematic on the screen.

Eliot frowned, then made sense of what he was seeing. "You set her to evil?"

Parker looked worried. "That's bad."

James took it back from him, activating several programs, downloading data and running diagnostics. "Evil party junkie, to be precise. It's the only way to survive that scene, believe me. Even if They don't sniff out a fake – and even in that world They're incredibly good at that – the scene itself will destroy you. I mean, it'll destroy you anyway, but not as quickly. It was the only way, and ... she knew the risks. I never thought she'd be immersed for so long, but I couldn't endanger the misson. I don't know how far gone she is."

"So why get her out now?"

"You remember her tweet about not being a douchebag?"

Eliot and Parker exchanged looks. "Uh, no?"

"A few months ago. It was a signal, part of a dormant subroutine we put in for when she had enough intel to be extracted. I've been tracking her, waiting for my chance ever since."

"So when she shot you..."

James touched his bullet-pierced shoulder with a wince. "She wasn't faking, believe me. We had to make her honestly despise me, or They might have suspected something. I mean, there was always something between us that we couldn't quite ... it's not just flipping a switch. At this point ... I don't know if I'll be able to get her back."

A quiet ding from the oven indicated the head was ready.

"Let's start by getting you back, then," said Eliot

James turned to him. "You sure it'll work?"

Eliot opened his mouth to lie, then shrugged honestly. "No. Your head and your body have both been through the wringer, and the longer we leave it ... your head's not getting any fresher over here, and you're going to run out of charge soon."

"So you're saying that reattaching it could just leave me dead."

"Well, yeah, but –"

"How long can you give me?"

Eliot stared. "What do you mean?"

"How long before ... the charge runs out or my head is past its use-by?"

"Uh ... this isn't an exact science, Jay. I mean, usually once your head is off your neck, it's past its use-by, you know? Right now, it's been forty minutes. I don't know – I'd give you good odds. Say eighty-five, ninety percent," he hazarded, looking for Winston's confirming nod. "But once it goes, it'll plummet."

"So another fifteen or twenty minutes?"

"Could be the difference between ten to one and one to ten. What the hell are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that I'm the only one who can restore her, and if I'm dead, she's gonna be stuck this way. Because of me."

"She knew the risks, you said. So she made her own choice. You can't –"

"I knew the risks when I went in that club tonight! I've made _my_ choice! I am not leaving her like this, no matter what, Eliot. So back off and let me work!"

Eliot held his hands up in surrender. "Can we do anything to help?"

"I'm hoping the muenster will act as a catalyst for old patterns," he said as he bent over the interface in his phone. "Mr Wolfe – it is Mr Wolfe, correct? – she likes the smell of roses, fresh coffee, acoustic guitar music ... if you have any of that, it could help."

Winston brought over a cup of coffee and placed it beside her on the table. "Call me Winston," he said. "Eliot, there should be a guitar out the back. No roses, though."

"No no, thank you," said James gratefully. "Every bit will help. Do you have a hair brush?"

Winston raised an eyebrow. "A comb," he offered, pulling it out of his pocket.

James nodded, never stopping his work. "Parker, do you think you can comb out her hair? Gently, though. She likes the feel of it. It'll relax her, help lower defences she's put up."

Parker looked doubtful, but accepted the comb and started working carefully through the tangles. When Eliot returned with the guitar, he settled in next to Parker without a word and began strumming a melody, soft and sweet in strange counterpoint to the tension as James fought his deadlines.

After ten minutes without a change, Eliot paused. "James..."

"Not yet."

Eliot played patiently for another five minutes, while James worked ever more feverishly fast, visibly burning energy, then paused again. Before he could say anything, James shook his head. "I'm getting there. _Not yet_."

In the next five minutes, a creeping slump began to claim James's extremities as he directed all available energy to his work. Eliot was about to open his mouth when Ke$ha stretched on the table, knocking the cup of coffee to the floor. The smash startled her awake, blinking in confusion, before her eyes focused on James.

"William?" she whispered slowly.

"Rose," he replied softly, taking her outstretched hand.

"What's ... your face..." She stilled as the memories of recent events played out, then abruptly sat up, yanking the jack out of herself and taking in the room at a glance. "Is that your head?"

"Yes, and time is of the fucking essence," said Eliot forcefully.

"I need to make sure –" began James, interrupted by her jumping to the floor.

"Get the hell up on this table," she ordered, even as Eliot arrived at their side and helped lift him onto it. "Tell me you can fix this."

"We're going to do everything we can. Was 'William/Rose' your code for you being reset? Because if not, you're not walking out of here, no offense."

"Middle names," said James weakly. "We're good."

"James, I swear, if you die because of this, I will find a way to resurrect you so I can kill you," Ke$ha promised.

James angled his head toward her, and it was only by contrast to the face's utter immobility to this point that the tiny curve of the mouth was apparent. "Missed you too."

* * *

**A/N:** Yup, that's THE END. I don't know if he survives. You tell me. :p


End file.
